Santa Fe: A New Mexico court on Wednesday (October 21, 2026) ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25 billion for years of misleading users about how it handled their personal data, in what is the largest penalty in the company’s history.
The Ruling
Judge Francis Mathew of the State District Court in Santa Fe issued the order following a two-week trial earlier this year. The jury found nearly 43.9 million willful violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, covering Facebook’s public statements from May 2010 through August 2021.
“The lies extend beyond Facebook’s data practices as well,” the judge wrote, adding that they went to “the heart of its core business practices.” Communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were “designed to mislead the public,” he said.
The court found that Facebook promised users control over their personal information, but its privacy settings often failed to provide that control. Specifically, limiting a post’s audience did not determine what information third-party developers could access. The company knew users did not understand the settings and exploited that confusion.
“Facebook was aware that its users did not understand its privacy settings and took advantage of that to a grossly unfair degree,” the ruling stated.
The Penalty
The full penalty, calculated at the maximum rate of $5,000 per violation, exceeded $219 billion. Judge Mathew reduced it to $25 billion, which will accrue interest at 15% annually until paid in full. The proceeds are to go to New Mexico’s education system.
State lawyers had sought up to $40 billion, while Meta argued that anything above $3.4 billion would be unconstitutional.
Meta to Appeal
Meta’s head lawyer, CJ Mahoney, said the ruling made it “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico” and confirmed the company would appeal. Mahoney argued that “at its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez struck a different note: “For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law,” he said, adding that the result “makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.”
Roots in Cambridge Analytica
The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the political consulting firm obtained personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app and used it in activities related to political advertising during the 2016 US presidential election. New Mexico filed its lawsuit in 2021.
The penalty is the latest in a series of major fines against Meta this year, including an $18 billion settlement with California over child safety and a nearly $1 billion fine from New Mexico for misleading the public about platform safety for children. It also follows a $5 billion fine imposed by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019.
